The Merc With A Maliwan
by johncastle
Summary: Wars sometimes call for desperate measures. An Infinity War calls for stupid measures. Annoying measures. Measures that won't shut the hell up. Also, Eridium.


You wouldn't think a soldier would write much of anything down. In ancient times, they did it all the time. I guess it's kind of a lost art these days, or maybe it's an art that never got found on this crap rock. But I'm going to write something down, anyway, because maybe writing it down will help me process it.

My name is Davith Axton (the given name is pronounced 'David', for those of you who didn't grow up on Hieronymus) and I'm not a hero. Sure, there was that whole vault thing, where I led a team - I guess you'd call us a team - to kill an alien warrior/god/whatever-it-was. And then there was that other vault thing, where I was declared the number one badass on Pandora. But that doesn't make me a hero. I'm just a guy who likes to get paid.

Because that makes sense to me. I do what I do for the money. Well, the money and the loot. Well... the money, the loot, and the pussy. And/or tail. But I don't do it because Hyperion caught me and experimented on me until I went rakkshit crazy, or because of some quest to discover my mystical origins, or because I like to eat people, or because I blew up some snotty kid at a science fair, or because... well, I don't know why Zer0 does what he does. I didn't think I did, anyway. Because this is about Zer0. I'm writing this in case he's gone crazy - more like in case he keeps going even crazier.

We've been living together for months, about a dozen of us. Lilith, Mordecai, and Brick are the top brass. Then there's me and that team I mentioned: Maya, Zero, Sal, Gaige, and Krieg. We have a couple extra hanging around, Tannis and Tina. Sleeping arrangements aren't as tight as you'd expect. Sal and I bunk up with the door in sight. Tannis sleeps in the corner in this weird chair that hangs from the ceiling, with the ladies over by the washers and dryers, and Krieg - well, Krieg sleeps outside next to the vending machines. We didn't even have to ask him to do it. We dodged a bullet. That guy _growls in his sleep_ , and he smells like a fire in a sewer - on a good day. As for Zer0, I've never seen that guy sleep, not once. I don't even know if he's a person or a robot or what.

But if he's a human, he's losing it. If he's a robot, he's having some really weird glitches. Talking in haiku is weird enough, but let me copy down the last one he said, this morning, as he was standing next to a skillet frying something:

 _My greatest challenge_

 _Culinary masterpiece_

 _A chimichanga_

Now, I don't know if I got that last word right, because I don't know what the hell a "chimichanga" even is, if there is such a thing. But the crazy thing was what he did next. He pulled this dark brown cylinder as thick as my wrist and as long as my hand out of a pot full of bubbling grease and started jamming it against the face plate of his helmet, saying, "Om nom nom nom nom" like he was pretending to eat it.

I have seen some serious shit since I got to Pandora, and for the first time, I don't feel safe here.

"What is he doing?"

It took me a second to tear my eyes away from Zer0 just in time to catch Tannis standing there. "You, uh... you might want to get dressed." Yeah, speaking of weird. Which... I probably shouldn't. There are some aspects of the "household" Lilith doesn't want getting around, and I can't really blame her. Let's put it this way, Tannis has been making herself really hard for me to ignore, this past couple weeks. I don't know why, and I probably don't want to know why. But if you knew her, you'd know that if Zer0's antics were putting her on her heels, that meant something.

And then the whole house spoke up:

"Oh-my-God-that-smells-DEELICIOUS?!"

"What is that?"

"Is that skag sausage?"

"THAT'S NOT A ME SMELL!"

"Here comes the pendejo."

"ARRRRRGH, ANGELS ARE FARTING FLUFFY TOOTS OF HEAVEN! I'm... sorry, everybody, that's just... SMELLS SO GOOD!"

It went on like that for a while. And Zer0 just stood there like a statue. It was like he was taking it in, absorbing the attention. And then his head tilted, like a puppy that's listening to something just beyond your range of hearing. I don't want to overuse this sentence, because if I did, you'd see it way too often before I'm done telling you this story, but... then he did something I never saw him do before: He didn't talk in haiku. "You guys hungry?"

"All right, just what the hell is going on down here?" I wish I could write down that it was me who asked that, but it wasn't. It was... okay, you know what? Nobody is ever going to see this, so screw the rules. It was Herself, the Ice Queen, the... no, not Hammerlock's sister, even she isn't the Ice Queen around here. I mean Lilith. I get it, lady, your boyfriend was murdered, but hello, you avenged him already, get the varkid out of your... whatever, I'm wasting keystrokes. She'll get over it or she won't. Just hope she gets over it sooner instead of later.

Anyway.

"Seriously." Zer0 said, which didn't make any /

 _Wait. Holy shit._

"I know, right? Trippy, isn't it!" he said, but /

Oh my God. I'm going to skip about three more things Zer0 said, because I am really freaking myself the fuck out right now.

"Okay, first of all, Zer0? That smells really good. Second? Since when do you cook? Since when do you _eat?_ And third? I am really, really confused right now, and I don't know if you know this, but when I get confused, I get _angry._ " Lilith glared daggers at him. He shrugged and offered her the thing he'd been pretending to eat, one end of which was now sort of mushed. It must be hard to stay angry when somebody offers you seasoned meat, cheese, and pepper sauce wrapped up in a flat bread and deep fried, because even though we were all still confused, it's kind of hard to wrap a scowl around a mouth full of food.

It gets easier when air raid sirens start blaring, though.

It had been a long time since the air raid sirens had sounded. I reacted to them by reflex, but that's because I have years of training behind that reflex. Gaige and Tina had the response of healthy, normal people - they flinched. In their defense, those sirens are loud. The brass showed us what eye rolls look like, in case anybody had forgotten. Krieg started a panicked kind of barking while trying to eat his michamanga **::Echo, set a reminder for me to go back and fix the spelling of that word later::** at the same time.

"Everybody calm down! It's probably just a glitch!" Lilith tapped her temple to get on the Echo. "Ellie? Ellie!" She waited a beat. "Of course we hear it, what's - well, why do you think I'm calling you? Fix it!" Another beat. "It's not? Holy shit." The only time I've seen her move faster than she did then was while she phasewalked. We followed her out the door, all but Tannis and Tina, who stayed put. Something about 'never put all your crazies in one nuthouse', maybe.

It wasn't until I got outside and saw Lilith looking up that I got at least the rough outline of what was going on. Between the rise and fall of the air raid sirens, there was a more persistent whine. It was turbines. I looked where Lilith looked, and sure enough, I caught sight of them just before their pass took them over the top of the Crimson Raider HQ and out of sight - buzzards. "I count four!" I shouted to be heard over the sirens. "Slabs?"

"Yeah!" A familiar voice shouted back as Brick lumbered around the corner. "Also no!"

"What?!" Lilith was getting confused. Angry. Confangry? She was getting confangry again.

"It's a coup! Rocko is pissed, says I abducticated my throne! He's trying to take over the slabs, but the rule is he has to kill me to do it!"

Chapter 2

Okay, I'm back. That last set of entries was kind of scattered. I was taking care of business and making entries here and there when I could. It's 1630 hours and I'm sitting at a back table at Moxxi's with a pizza and a pitcher of rakk ale, so hopefully no interruptions this time.

Shit, where was I? Oh, yeah.

"How the hell did they get those things through the shield?" I asked Lilith.

She just held up a hand and shook her head. "Well, override it! No! Ellie, if anybody was going to yell at you for it, it would be me, and I'm about to start yelling at you for not turning it off! Ye —" The sirens spun down to silence. "Yes, that was the right button. Thank you." The only sonic annoyance left was the squadron of buzzards.

Maya had heard my question, so she tried asking it this time.

"The shield is tuned for ballistic defense, not mass repulsion." Lilith explained, if you can call that an explanation. I guess she caught the look on my face, because she added, "If it's small and comes in fast, the shield blocks it. If it's large and comes in slow, the shield doesn't trigger. Do you know how much power the thing draws? If it was frying birds, the fuel cell would be dead in an hour."

"Does that mean I can shoot those guys?" Zer0 leaned over my shoulder. I admit it, I jumped.

"What guys?" Maya had to lean around Krieg, and gave him a gentle push to one side with the hand on the inked side. He jumped, gave a puppy-like whine, and took a sideways step toward me, fried meat roll between hand and mouth, his buzz-axe in his other hand. I gagged and took a sideways step myself to get the distance back.

Brick grinned hugely. "Those guys! _Hey_ , Slabs!"

They had rappelled from the buzzards to land on the other side of the core and edged around it on both sides, guns up. One of them grinned back and waved until one of his compatriots slapped the back of his head. I didn't recognize any of them until their leapfrog-style advance brought one familiar face to the front of the line so he could step out and let them flank him in a wedge formation.

"Brick!"

"Rocko. So! Here we are. You're here to challenge me for the throne!"

The barrel of Rocko's gun — it looked like a Torgue rifle under all the brown crud — dipped, and he palmed his face. "I was trying to tell you, you damned idiot! I'm not challenging you for the throne because you _walked away_ from the throne. I'm not here to become King of the Slabs — I _am_ King now! Because you abandoned us!"

Brick actually looked hurt by that. He reached up with a sausage-like finger and wiped a tear from his eye. But he took it like a man. He gulped, nodded, and said simply, "Well- okay."

"Okay," Mordecai spoke up — Jesus, that guy is even more stealthy than Zer0 sometimes. It's probably because he's so scrawny he can walk into buildings through the mail slots. "So why are you guys here? Sounds like your business with Brick is settled."

"Actually, business is exactly why we're here." Rocko's rifle leveled again, and the Slabs with him re-braced their own guns. "See, you guys have made a lot of people really angry. Not that we care about a lot of people, but when angry people offer us a mountain of cash, a warehouse of whiskey, and a whole army of new recruits? That's when we start caring. They want about a dozen heads, with or without the matching bodies."

"Wait, is this about the thing with the Zafords and the Hodunks?" Gaige looked up at me.

"Yeah, probably."

"Well, you did slaughter about half of each family." Lilith pointed out.

"They were deserving."

"Thanks for that, Krieg, but our immediate problem isn't which side of the moral compass we're on." Lilith squared her shoulders. At the same time, movement caught my eye from the periphery of the courtyard. It was the movement of gun barrels aimed by Crimson Raiders. It was now a Truxican standoff writ large.

Lilith raised her voice: "I'm going to give you all clemency today! March down to the open area next to the garage! I'm sure you saw it during your flyovers! I will allow your buzzards to land there and pick you up! I will allow you to leave without bloodshed! This is my one and only offer of mercy!"

"The damage to our reputation if we take your offer is too high, and the pay for your soldiers' heads is too good!" Rocko countered. "So as generous as your offer is, I believe I will obligate you to dip that offer in sauce and eat it, now how do you like that!"

"Shit." Mordecai sighed.

"Axton, you want to do the math on this for us, please?" Lilith regarded me over her shoulder. I stepped up next to her and turned my torso nice and slow so that my targeting assist could take in the numbers and positions of the Slabs and feed them to my Echo.

And that's when Zer0 giggled.

"Oh, fuck m—"

"All right, chums, let's do this!" He spoke up. It felt like I had swallowed a chunk of ice. I didn't know what he was about to do, but I knew we weren't going to like it. That's when he charged forward, screaming, "LEEEE _ROYYYYYYYYYY_... hhhnnn _JENNNNNN_ KINNNNNNS!"

I've seen Zer0 fight. On the train that was supposed to take us to Opportunity from the Orbital Transfer Shuttle's touchdown terminal, to the jungles of Aegris, and everywhere in between. I know his fighting style. This- wasn't it.

Let me take a second to explain something: When Zer0 fights, you might see him stop moving and just stand in place flailing his sword around. That's not him. What he's actually done, when that happens, is he's dropped a holo decoy and cloaked. Everybody pumps bullets into the decoy while Zer0 is actually maneuvering around them.

He doesn't know it, but my targeting assist module tracks the real him and feeds the visual data to my Echo. Thanks, Dahl. I've seen him do fancy crap with his sword. I've seen him do fancy acrobatics, flip through the air, leap over a pair of guys backing him toward the edge of a building's roof and kick them both off the building, one with each foot.

But until this day, I'd never seen him just walk up to a guy, wait for the cloak to expire, then lift up an open hand, tap his fingers on the guy's nose, and announce, "Boop!"

I don't know if it was reflex or luck, but he dropped straight down to the ground at the instant the startled Slabs opened fire — and with such a volume of lead, incendiary, shock, and gyrojets that Rocko's shield lasted for a fraction as long as it needed to to keep Rocko in one piece.

The first gunshot was like an incendiary round to a fuel tank. The road next to Pierce Station lit up at the same time the other end coming in from Zed's clinic did. All our shields took ricochets. Most of the Slabs didn't have shields and got cut to pieces. The ones who did threw their guns down and their hands up.

Zer0 lay under Rocko's shredded body for a second before he sprang to his feet, leaned forward toward the trio of surviving Slabs, and said, " _Uh_ oh?!"

Lilith managed to keep it together long enough to tap her temple: "Take the survivors into custody." She looked over and up at Brick. "You decide what to do with 'em. Looks like the coup is over." Then she pointed at Zer0. "You! Zed's! _Now!_ "

It looked like a damned parade, except the 'music' was us asking various versions of "What the hell?"

Zer0 led the procession, with Lilith and Mordecai a couple steps behind and on either side of him, with pistols ready to hip fire. Overhead, Mordecai's bird Talon squawked and took short jumps from building to building to keep his owner in sight.

The clinic isn't really a place you want to pack a busload of people into, but none of us was going to stand outside and hear what happened second-hand unless we were ordered to — and with Lilith about to boil over, we figured we could probably line the walls, stay out of her way, and keep front row seats.

"Hey, Lilith." Zed looked up from one of his vending machines' keypads. "Do me a solid, will ya? Get Johnny Waffles to pay up for whizzin' on this keypad? Ellie wants a fat stack of cash to digistruct a replacement, and I ain't got the dollars right at hand."

"Remind me later." she said coolly. She prodded Zer0 with the barrel of her pistol. "You have an examination to perform." To Zer0 she said, "Take that helmet off, killer. And you don't want to tell me it doesn't come off, because after that little performance out there, I will _find_ a way to get it off."

"What's goin' on?" Zed stood and looked up at Zer0, then down at Lilith.

"Mr. Mysterious here just damned near got civilians killed in the middle of town." Mordecai supplied.

Zer0 turned his head toward Lilith. "Are you sure you want me to take this off?"

Lilith thumbed back the hammer on her pistol.

"Okay! You're sure. It really isn't supposed to come off, though." His hands rose anyway, index fingers found a pair of release catches in seams at the helmet's temples, and the faceplate came away in his hands.

Zed saw him first. "Mother of skag-Jesus."

"Do you _like_ this face?" Without the electronic processing of the helmet, Zer0 sounds like an absolute asshole. He turned to show the rest of us. I've got an iron stomach, but I wished I hadn't eaten. I swear to God Lilith actually turned green.

He handed her the helmet's faceplate, so she looked at that instead. "This- okay, no. This isn't-" She handed it to Mordecai.

" _Qué diablos. Eso no está bien._ " He stared at it and repeated, "That's not possible."

I took the faceplate and looked at it myself, then looked up at Zer0. He waggled an eyebrow at me, or the part of his face where an eyebrow was probably supposed to be. I looked back at the faceplate — at the inside of it — and saw what Lilith and Mordecai had seen.

There wasn't room for a face to fit behind it. It wasn't a helmet.

"Gold star." Zer0 said.

"Zed," Lilith said, very quietly, "check the readings."

"I already did." Zed spoke up from his terminal next to the door. "You ain't gonna like 'em. That's not Zer0. Except it _is_ Zer0."

"Somebody please go get me a chunk of Eridium." She massaged both temples with her palms. Gaige was happy to head for HQ. Krieg looked intensely curious but otherwise completely unaffected. That figured. This was probably the first day he'd seen in a long time where shit was his level of crazy.

"How," Lilith asked patiently, "is that Zer0 _and_ Not Zer0?"

"Everybody who walks through that door gets scanned every time." Zed explained to the rest of us. "I compared Zer0's reading from just now with his readings from every time before now. There ain't no other file in my records like his, on account of there ain't no other file in my records that's _blank_. He ain't never given off any readings at all until today. The scannin' field saw him as a non-entity, same as when Clappy would roll in here."

"And today he reads as human?" Maya asked, looking up at Zer0 with fascination instead of revulsion. That girl and the freaks. Go figure.

"Yeah, except- well, almost human." Zed pointed toward his terminal's screen like there was any chance we could read or understand it. "There's a body in there now, but the readings are way off standard at the cellular level. And the brain activity is- well, closest I ever seen to brain activity like this is Krieg's. It's actually weird that he ain't barkin' at his shoes or screamin' about pasta ponies like our friend here."

Salvador shouldered his way around Maya to look up at Zer0. Zer0 leaned way down and said, very quietly and very seriously: " _Boo._ "

"Enough!" Lilith growled. She tried looking Zer0 in the eye. Didn't quite pull it off. "What the hell is this?"

Zer0 sighed. "Is it a cop-out if I say you wouldn't believe me if I told you?" She didn't answer. "Right. What if I told you I come from somewhere where powers like yours? They're cool, but not really uncommon."

"You know there are only six people like me in the universe at one time, right?"

"That's _this_ universe."

"Hey, Lilith?" Zed beckoned her over toward where he stood staring at the terminal. "You wanna, um- step over here for a second?" He reached up to tap his temple. "Ellie, darlin'? Need you up here at the clinic. No, it ain't about the vending machine, just gitch'yer butt up here. I promise you wanna see this."

We all shifted over toward the morgue drawers on the back wall. Ellie was going to need room to get through. She made her way past us — grabbed my ass with a, "Hey, cutie!" as she did — then over to the terminal. "Awll right, what's so damn important you gotta drag me offa mah breakfast?"

She obviously hadn't noticed Zer0's face. I was tempted to clear my throat to see how fast breakfast left her train of thought, but I'm not that mean.

After a few moments of hushed but intense conversation, she leaned over the terminal and looked. "Ho-lee shyeeit." She had to half turn — this way to look up at Zed — the other way to look at Lilith. "Y'awll are shittin' me." They said nothing. "You're- right? No? You ain't shittin' me." She turned all the way around this time, which took her a few steps, and then she saw it.

She went as white as paste and actually backed up three quick steps, knocking a box of meds off Zed's desk. She looked like her knees were going to buckle. "Oh, mah dear God in _Fuck!_ " she shouted.

"Rude!" Zer0 shook his head.

"That," she pointed, "ain't go gaw damn drone!"

"Well, no, not now it ain't." Zed pointed out the obvious. "But it was. Some'n' is changin' it into- um- that guy."

I had a question of my own. "Wait a minute. Hey, Zed- you mean to tell me this was the Sickbay?"

"Well, what'n'a hell you think all them morgue drawers are for? You figure this was the galley?"

"Fair enou-" I started to say it. I stopped. I had to leave. We all had to leave. Ellie started screaming. Zed started screaming. We stood outside and listened to the screaming and wanted to do something, but there was nothing we could do.

Zed stopped screaming first, then Ellie's scream sort of trailed off into a high whistle that finally ended in a dry croaking sound.

When the door opened, everybody started screaming. Gaige appeared around the corner — and disappeared right the hell back around that corner after tossing the eridium roughly in Lilith's direction with a jerky motion. I could hear her sobbing between dry heaves.

What remained of Zer0 stood behind us, bare of armor. And most of his skin.

"Minions! Why are you all — oh, God! What the hell is _that!_ "

Of course. _Of- course._ Because things weren't bad enough.

"You stole my question." Zer0/Not-Zer0 was actually talking to Claptrap. That could work. I nudged Lilith with one hand, Maya with the other. Both were so rattled that they didn't even give me the stank-eye I would normally have expected for touching them. The signal passed on to Sal and Krieg.

"I didn't see your name on that question!"

We started moving. Nice and slow. Nice and easy. As soon as we made it to the corner, Maya let Krieg help her toward HQ's door. "I don't ever want to see that again." she said very quietly.

"I've seen worse." he answered in a startlingly sane voice. "But not much worse."

We made it upstairs to the situation table before a lot of our collective nerve went out. Gaige was up there already, sitting out on the floor of the balcony with her back to a wall, just staring at nothing. Maya collapsed onto a couch. Sal sat beside her. Mordecai and Brick stayed back near the safe, talking in low voices. Lilith rested both hands on the table and stared at the display until I stepped up beside her on one side, Brick stepped up on the other, and Mordecai looked around at the assembly of shellshocked expressions.

"What the hell is wrong with you people? Was that worse than seeing a corpse?"

"Yes." Lilith snapped. "Corpses aren't supposed to peel off a mechanical suit that isn't supposed to be a suit and then strut around naked after they're dead."

"Granted, that's unusual." he replied patiently. "But I don't remember getting an Echo that said after I met a woman who could turn into a purple streak of light and walk through people and teleport cities- and kill a giant evil plate of uncooked tempura —"

"Or fight a giant lava monster," I added.

Mordecai nodded and carried right on, "That things were going to get 'usual' afterward."

"What's your point?" Lilith just sounded tired now.

"The point is," Brick spoke up, "we've seen weirder things than that. We've _killed_ weirder things than that, when we had to."

"I'm still going on a diet." a voice piped up from out on the balcony.

"What did I miss?" Tina peeked around the corner.

"You don't want to know!" I didn't know we could all talk in unison like that. That was actually pretty cool.

"Okay, first of all," I spoke up. Someone had to. "Let's all do two things. Breathe, and think. Let's start with what we know for sure. Um-" I drew a blank at that point. "What _do_ we know for sure?"

Lilith palmed the Eridium she'd scooped up before we left Claptrap to deal with Zer0/Not-Zer0. She did her nightlight thing, breathed a few very deep breaths. "Okay. Okay." Another deep breath. "So Zer0 isn't a person. And it's not a robot, either. Well- sort of not a robot."

"An alien?" Maya asked.

"He's not an Eridian." Mordecai pointed out. "We've seen one of those."

"No, it's not an alien." Lilith shook her head. "It's a drone."

"So it's like a robot." Brick looked smug.

"Sure, whatever." Lilith rolled her eyes. "Zed's scan showed that the body is mechanical. Coltan skeleton, WetFlex musculature and connective tissues, so it's probably Atlas tech. The armor is Ceramicore, which is why the scans didn't show anything until living tissue started replacing the stuff inside. The scans picked up part of a low-level neural net and a tachyon burst transceiver. Whoever Zer0 actually is, we've never met him face to face. Or her, for all we know. Hell, for all we know, it might be some kid somewhere operating the drone like a character in an Echo sim."

"That would explain the obsession with tackling the biggest challenges they can find." Krieg pointed out.

"How is it the more crazy everything else is, the more crazy you're not?" I couldn't help it — I had to ask. Krieg just shrugged.

Gaige finally came in off the balcony to sit on the sofa on Maya's other side. The siren snuggled the teenager, who buried her face between a shoulder and blue hair. Tina perched on the arm of the chair to snuggle her from the other side, without knowing why.

"Did you guys know you left your downstairs door unlocked?"

 _Asshole_. my mind reacted instantly to the voice. My gun was out and level with a red suit before my conscious self processed the stimulus or the response.

"Chill out, Rambo."

Okay, at least the guy was dressed this time. And how he was dressed was actually sort of reminiscent of Zer0, if Zer0 were to dress up for a slumber party. A red costume of what looked like some kind of stretchy fabric, trimmed in black, with belts sporting pouches. Instead of a helmet, he sported a mask of the same material but with trapezoidal black patches around white coverings for his eyeballs. That mask was weirdly expressive, as if it was his face rather than fabric covering his face.

Everyone stared.

"I suppose you're wondering why I've gathered you all here today." he said sardonically. "I've always wanted to say that." He skipped — skipped — over to Brick. "You must be the Big Dick On Campus. Wade Wilson." He held out a hand. Brick stared at him. "No? Let's try the sparkler."

He turned to Lilith, hand still outstretched. "Wade Wilson."

"Don't touch me." she growled.

"Oh, look at you." he leaned down toward her. "You're _tough._ You're the battle-hardened warrior woman with the big heart behind a bigger wall." Brick snarled. "Wade Wilson" straightened, turned, and looked up. "And these are the other two Musketeers. Oh, but here's the _real_ candy." He tilted his head as he stared at Maya. "I'll see your redheaded Unobtainium addict and raise you a cloister girl with a sacred quest to unearth her divinity."

 _Stream interrupted_

 _Attempting to reconnect_

 _Autonomous Mode_

Zer0 stood in the doorway staring at "Wade Wilson", with his faceplate displaying a series of radial lines flashing in sequence, like you'd see on an Echocast when it's buffering.

"Okay, BEFORE I GO INSANE, could somebody PLEEEEEASE tell me what's going on?!" Tina fidgeted and stared between Zer0 and the new guy.

Wilson leaned down toward her. "It's girl talk. Wanna trade masks?"

"Can I stuff a grenade up your ass?"

"Spicy! Oh, and who's this saucy little number?" He waved toward Tannis, who stood partially obscured by the doorframe.

"You're not supposed to be here." I had seen Patricia Tannis in all kinds of different moods, from manic to depressed and down all kinds of detours in between. I had never seen her afraid before.

Wilson crossed his arms. "Do I look like a guy who does what he's 'supposed to' do?"

"No, I mean you're _really_ not supposed to be here!" she shouted, and ran back toward the stairs.

"You need to go. Right now." Brick isn't the kind of guy you argue with when he says that. But, of course, this guy did.

"And you need me to stay." He looked toward Lilith. "Ask me why."

I heard a soft beep and a click. The 'buffering' animation had left Zer0's face, which now showed a O.o emoticon.

 _Why am I up here?_

 _Half an hour has elapsed._

 _What the hell is this?_

Wilson stepped over to Zer0 and patted its shoulder. "Had to borrow your toy as a landing pad, kid. Send the bill to Tony Stark."

"I thought you said your name was Wade Wilson." Mordecai reminded him.

"Your name sucks." Brick pointed out.

"How about Deadpool?" Wilson asked. "Anyway, we're talking about important things now. _Grownup_ things. Okay?"

"You said we need you." Lilith leaned against the situation table. "We don't. There is nothing we could possibly need an asshole in pajamas to deal with."

"Au contraire, mon chere with zee fine derriere." Deadpool wagged a finger at her. "See, I happen to know a guy who knows a guy who knows a giant talking squid-headed guy who says you guys just got drafted into a war. I also happen to know who you're fighting." He shrugged. "And where. And when. And how they're going to wipe your asses."

We all stared.

"Out." He shook his head. "Wipe your asses out."

We still stared.

He leaned forward, close enough to Lilith that Brick drew back a fist and Mordecai drew his pistol, and whispered. "You're fighting the Prometheans. _And one of them is in this building right now spying on you._ "

Chapter 3

"A spy. Right." Brick folded his runner-sized forearms over his caravan-sized chest.

"An alien spy." Mordecai smirked. "Don't forget that part."

Downstairs, the front door slammed open, followed by running footsteps. Deadpool looked in that direction, his shoulders slumped in an exaggerated, theatrical fashion, and he turned on the brass. " _Why_ do you think I was _whispering?!_ "

"Wait, what?!" I asked. He was running full-tilt toward the balcony, and had leaped over the wall and out toward the road. "Hey!"

There was nothing to do but leap over after him. I was actually surprised to hear other pairs of feet landing behind me. "Is he chasing who I think he's chasing?!" Lilith shouted.

"I don't know, probably?!"

"Hello, darlings! We've brought prezzies — _oh!_ "

I rounded the corner toward Pierce Station, twisted my body so I wouldn't knock Aurelia and Athena on their asses, and slid almost a meter on my own ass instead. I just lay there for a longer moment than I'm proud to record. Maya and Gaige were lighter on their feet and jumped over me, then pounded feet toward the Station.

"What _are_ you doing down there?" Aurelia looked down her nose at me. Athena at least offered me a hand up.

"Landed on my keys-" I hissed.

"So who was the guy in the clown suit, and why was he chasing Tannis?"

"While you're telling us what I'm sure is a simply fascinating story to common people, be a good boy and take these bags, won't you?" I was feeling more or less inclined to tell Aurelia just what she could do with her bags when Maya and Gaige reappeared in the doorway to Pierce Station wearing matching scowls.

"Here, let me." Lilith took a bag in each hand, phasewalked up, then reappeared empty-handed. "Hey, tiger. How's the wife?"

"She's- her." Athena shrugged.

"Okay." Lilith watched Maya and Gaige until they got close. "Let me guess. Tannis and the asshole both got away."

"I almost had him." Maya spat. "Just a tenth of a second sooner."

"Okay, but here's the good news. And- also bad news." Gaige added. "We know where they went."

"Well, is that the good news or the bad news?" I asked.

They looked at me and said, as one, "Both."

I stared at them, waiting. They stared at me, at Lilith, at Aurelia and Athena, then at Krieg as he lumbered toward us.

" _Well?!_ " Lilith prompted.

Maya sighed. "They went to the Eridium Blight."

"Well, that doesn't sound like a vacation spot." Aurelia sniffed. "And who, exactly, are 'they'?" She pawed the air. "I know you mean the little crazy woman and the skinny man in the absolutely preposterous pyjamas, but why does it matter where they've gone?"

"Gods help us." Lilith murmured. She ignored Aurelia and turned toward me. "You know how much Tannis knows about the Eridians. About us. That Deadpool guy is an asshole, and he's probably crazier than a shithouse rat, too. But we can't bet on him being wrong. Tannis didn't run until the word 'spy' started flying around."

"If she's headed for the Vault of the Warrior, I don't know what she thinks she can accomplish in there."

"Probably a lot," Mordecai shouldered his way past Brick. "considering what she took with her."

"Oh, _no._ Oh, come _on!_ Tell me she didn't." Lilith dropped her face into both hands.

"Sorry, Lil. She did. Unless clown boy's fingerprint opens the case, Tannis took the Vault Key."

Purple lightning. It never even occurred to me the first couple time I passed through the gallery of hell that is the Eridium blight. Maybe it's just the overall color of everything there, but between dodging the mutant bullymongs, ducking under the leathery wings of swooping rakk, and trying not to get my head shot off by loaders, I never noticed the color of the lightning.

"They airlifted me completely over the top of it by drop barge." Lilith explained. "You don't want me in there any more than I want me in there. Gods only know what would happen if I got hit. Five nuggets of Eridium let me teleport a city. Hit me with Eridiumized lightning, and maybe a chunk of Pandora ends up on Elpis. Or maybe the whole planet ends up in the sun. How about we just don't find out."

We knew exactly where we didn't want to find Tannis. And, of course, that's exactly where we _did_ find her. We sprinted up the hill from the fast travel station, hands full and minds empty of everything except fields of fire.

A lone bullymong pup leaped into my path and I let Maggie tell him why that had been a bad idea. We reached the opening in the concrete barriers without any further opposition from the wildlife. I hate bottlenecks, but the fastest way through them is through them, so I jumped the concrete and trusted the others to follow suit.

"-that's all! Just give me some of the McGuffinite and I'm out of here!" Was Deadpool trying to negotiate with Tannis? Maybe, I still don't know. I don't know what McGuffinite is. Maybe the stuff is worth something. Maybe he wanted it to make more michinangalas with.

"Hold it!" I shouted. "Tannis! Tannis, come over here to us! Okay? It's gonna be fine! Just come over here to us, nice and slow!"

"That's a bad idea!" Deadpool shouted back. "A really bad —"

If I didn't have seven witnesses and Echo footage to back me up on this, I wouldn't put down what happened next.

As we advanced slow and steady, the others fanning out to either side of me in a phalanx, Tannis tilted her head back and screamed. But the scream didn't die out. It got louder, the pitch got higher, and her eyes started to glow an electric blue, like two points where metal was being spot-welded. At the same time, her image started to blur. I thought I was seeing double, but I wasn't just seeing it, and it wasn't just double. Three, four, six, twelve, Tannis's image spread out from her until there were forty, maybe fifty Tannis's, all with heads thrown back, all shrilling into the clouds with searing blue eyes.

"Oh. My. Fuck." That was the first thing I heard someone say after my ears stopped ringing, probably because I'm the one who said it.

The Tannis-es- Tannis Swarm? That sounds better. The Tannis Swarm lowered their heads, their chorused scream silent but eyes still glowing and leaving tracers as they moved.

"Axton? Little guidance?"

I was about to give some when the Swarm raised their forearms in a crossed position across their chests, hands open. Blades with the same searing blue light as their eyes extended from their fingers. "Fuck me-"

"If we survive, dear, you will have earned the privilege."

I ignored Aurelia. "Okay. So there's an army of Tannis-es, with- I don't know what the hell those are growing out of their fingers, but they probably don't tickle. Maya, Gaige, Athena, you three are on defense. Maya, if those things get too close, lock and converge 'em. Gaige, the ones who get past Maya are food for Deathtrap. Athena, the other two might need your shield. Zer0, I want you to get behind them, see if you can find the original. She's the one with the Vault Key, so she's our top priority. Sal, Aurelia, the three of us are offense, let's see if we can thin the herd a little." They nodded and started for their positions. "And Krieg-"

He startled and looked at me.

" _Smash._ "

I want to take a second to explain this before I get into describing it: I didn't think about the details of the fight until later. We all got our Echo footage together, put notes together, but at the time, there was no chance to stop and smell the adrenaline. So this part I'm going to tell you now is a lot of memory, a lot of footage review, and a lot of shared stories between us, and a lot of the sharing happened when we were varying degrees of well-earned drunk.

The first ones in were Zer0 and Krieg — Zer0 broke right while Krieg broke left, screaming and waving his buzz-axe like the mad bastard he is, barreling toward the swarm's right flank to draw their attention away from Zer0, who promptly cloaked and jumped over a pair of Tannises, heading for their rear line.

At the same time, the first wave of Tannises came at us; targeting assist gave me ten of them to the six of us holding the line. One thing I noticed even then was that they moved fast. I'd put their speed on par with Lilith's when she phasewalks, only they weren't phasing.

I didn't bother with a pithy remark, I just deployed my Sabre right toward the center of the oncoming mass. With the Longbow deployment upgrade, half of it appeared on the lower legs of one of them and put her on her ass.

Temporarily. She kicked it off herself like it weighed as much as a can of beer. But God love that turret, it slagged her and punched a hole in her chest while it was flying through the air. But when it hit the ground, it hit sideways and couldn't target anymore. I pulled my Hammer Buster.

Sal had a pair of Spitters out, but even the amount of fire he laid down wasn't catching nearly enough of them as the second wave came on. One of them paused and tilted her head back, opened her mouth —

"Shut! _Up!_ " Maya roared, and threw a lock on the Tannis. As the lock pulled half a dozen more in on the trapped one, I one-armed the Hammer buster and pulled a Fastball.

"Throwin' a masher!" I warned the team and let it fly. For a long moment, I thought I'd missed — but the convergence caught it and sucked it in right on top of them. The bubble flashed white and dispersed, showering the next wave of Tannises in gore.

I triggered my Echo. "Zer0, we really need some good news back here!"

 _Patience, Commando_

 _Difficulty encountered:_

 _Deadpool's in the way_

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" I planted both feet but kept my knees loose. One shot, another, another. Bullet after bullet went home, but I wasn't getting the headshots I wanted because these bitches were faster than rats and almost as agile.

Meanwhile, Zer0 had problems of his own. Yeah, I know, we still don't know if it's a he or a she on the control end of the drone, but I'm not going to add 'or she' to every reference to Zer0. That's just- I'm just not. Anyway, the voice that comes out of it is male, so it's not the dumbest assumption.

"Listen, Snake Eyes, I don't have time to argue about this. I was given three hours to get enough of your magical purple rock to do one really important job, and now my time is almost up because _you guys_ tipped off the patsy! See, I need that magical purple rock to power a magical purple gun that can maybe — _maybe!_ — stop a Magical Purple _Shit-pie_ from doing some Really Bad Shit to my universe! And _nobody_ does Really Bad Shit to my universe except _me!_ "

Deadpool pulled a pair of swords like Zer0's from crossed scabbards on his back, held one on Zer0, and pointed toward a lone Tannis with the other. A lone Tannis working furiously at the controls that opened or closed the massive door separating the Eridium Blight from the Hero's Pass. "She's got what I came here for! You don't! So either help me get it from her or go suck a Robocock!"

 _He closed them!_ I remembered thinking. _That obnoxious, glorious, stupid, beautiful little son of a bitch! Claptrap remembered to_ close the fucking doors behind us!

That's why she'd been stopped here. That's why we were facing an army of her, instead of whatever she had been headed for the Vault to get. For a moment — just a little tiny one — I almost thought I could give Clappy a hug for maybe accidentally saving the world.

Zer0 looked over at the Tannis working the door controls. Looked at Deadpool.

 _There's just one problem_

 _With your explanation, fool_

 _I don't believe you_

Back on the line, we had started losing ground. Bad.

Maya couldn't lock again this soon, and although she slagged them and Aurelia frosted them, they must have found it invigorating, because all it did was slow them down for a second. I had a split second to see Krieg mowing through them like wheat — until he went down in a tangle of them. Deathtrap put a few down, but whatever those claws were, they tore through the machine's shield like toilet paper. The machine itself didn't have it even that easy. Gaige recalled it with a whimper, then opened up with her Vladof, enraged, spewing lead everywhere except at the swarm- which didn't seem to matter, because she perforated half a dozen of them anyway.

Athena ran one through with her sword before it landed a swipe on her Aspis that triggered the shield's discharge instantly and knocked the assassin sprawling — the shield took the heads off three of them before it slammed home on the bracer she wore on her forearm.

My magazine clicked bingo, but there wasn't time to stow the Hammer Buster. I just dropped it and pulled my Hellfire. "Spread out! Everybody spread out!" I didn't have time to wait to make sure they did it — three Tannis's were almost on me. I lit them up and stepped to one side as they passed, trailing infernos behind them, then turned the 'fire on the rest of the closing front.

My Echo crackled, and for a split second I held onto a frayed thread of hope that Zer0 had found the original Tannis and was about to close the curtains on this shit show.

" _Hey, Slab!"_ The thread vanished. It was Brick.

" _Pull your people back, Axton."_ Mordecai this time. It was harder to hear him, because — I felt a nasty kind of grin growing on my face. The one with all the teeth. _"The fucking cavalry is here."_

"Back! _Everybody back!_ " I grabbed Gaige around the waist with one arm, dragged Athena to her feet with the other, while Sal, Aurelia, and Maya backpedaled but continued to lay down fire. I had to hope Zer0 and Krieg had heard the order and were following it, but they were too far away, with too many Tannises between us, to confirm that.

The Tannises paused and tilted their heads back — but between seeing what was coming and opening their mouths to scream themselves into their own reinforcements, Hell rained down on them.

I've seen mortar barrages from lone buzzards, even from a pair. But before that day, I had never seen a simultaneous mortar barrage from eight of the damned things all at once. It was- beautiful.

So was Aurelia, come to think of it, blinking at me with a stupid look on her blood soaked face. I reached over and pulled what was probably a piece of Tannis tendon off the tip of her nose.

When the bombardment hit, Zer0 was cloaked and dodging one of Deadpool's katanas. The combined blast wave took them both off their feet. Zer0 was flung against a supply crate, while Deadpool tumbled toward the last remaining Tannis.

Zer0 got to his feet in time to see Tannis tilt her head up, open her mouth —

And take a punch to the throat that sent her stumbling and retching.

"I think I speak for everyone here," Deadpool said, "when I say that we have heard _enough_ out of you!"

Zer0 reached them just in time to watch Tannis's electric-blue claws neatly slice Deadpool's head from his neck.

"Fine." Deadpool was still talking. Still. Fucking. Talking. Nothing shuts that guy up. Or shuts him down, apparently, because he returned the favor with one of his katanas before his body crumpled to the ground. Tannis's head fell next to Deadpool's, then rolled to face the other direction.

The rest of the swarm evaporated. I don't know how else to describe it. They just sort of dissolved into steam, and the steam floated away.

"Maya!" that was Sal's voice, calling from our left. "We got wounded!"

We got to Krieg as quick as we could, but there wasn't much we could do for him. Maya could, but she'd have to hurry. I spotted Zer0 over by the door and headed in that direction at a jog. Zer0 stood over two bodies — Deadpool's and Tannis's. I triggered my Echo. "We're clear here. One wounded. Tannis is — scratch that. All the Tannises are dead."

"Deadpool?"

"Decapitated."

"Thank God."

"Not dead."

"The fuck you say?!"

Maya knelt next to Krieg. So did Athena and Gaige. Krieg stared up at them. When Zed watched the footage their Echoes had captured, his medical diagnosis was, and I quote, "That boy done got torn to hell."

Krieg stared up at them and said, very quietly, "The tiny one and the sad faced mother and the blue tattoo forever and ever-" and closed his good eye. Gaige started to cry.

"Shut up and back away." Maya pushed them back, then phaselocked him. In the velvety glow of the lock, purple light bathed and closed the wounds before the bubble burst and dropped him, sputtering, onto his face in the rank smelling dirt. "Get the fuck up!" Maya complained. "Who's supposed to run the damned poop train if you die, you lazy asshole?!" Then she threw her arms around him.

Meanwhile, Deadpool was still talking. "Look," he said, "this is serious. Okay?" He was cradling his head in his left arm. It's hard to take anything seriously when it's coming from a head cradled under its own arm. "And I'd love to explain to you all the details and intricacies of what's going on here — like about the guy who used the Eye Of Macaroni, or whatever it's called, to transpose me into your pal Storm Shadow here, or about a giant purple asshole named Thanos who _stole my girlfriend and won't let me die and is trying to destroy whole universes because THAT'S HIS IDEA OF AN ANNIVERSARY GIFT FOR HER!_ " he sighed. "But I don't have the time! _Okay?!_ I just need-"

Zer0 pulled something from his pack. A whole cluster of refined Eridium, four bars worth, weighing about five pounds.

"-that."

Zer0 looked a little confused for a second, then passed it to the hand that wasn't holding Deadpool's head.

 _Go and save your world_

 _But don't think this makes us friends_

 _You're still an asshole_

And then the asshole was just... gone. In one frame of the footage, he's standing there, a cluster of Eridium in one hand, his head in the other, and you can even tell that he's smiling behind the mask. In the next frame, nothing there.

Chapter 4

"You think he saved his world?" Mordecai looked like he was only asking the question to break the silence. Brick looked at him, but only offered a shrug.

"Does it matter? To us, I mean." Lilith lifted the deep fried, lumpy cylinder of meat and cheese to her lips, then took a bite. A tiny cascade of ground meat fell to her plate. It wasn't bad, for a first try at a chimichanga.

"Did you look at the footage? He said 'universes' toward the end." Maya answered. "Somebody called Thanos is going to destroy 'universes'. Yeah, I think maybe that matters to us."

"As a matter of curiosity, all right." Krieg spoke up. "But considering that there's nothing we can personally do about it, curiosity is as much of a foothold as we should let it have." I admit it, I liked him better when he didn't make sense. And- with the mask. And when we could smell him coming. He's older than the rest of us. Head of gray hair, eye patch. He looks like a General. Maybe he was one, once.

No one thought to ask

But I have information

It turned out just fine

We all turned to stare at Zer0 fast enough to make the feet of chairs shriek. "What?!"

Many lives were lost

But in the end, Thanos paid

And time was restored

"What is he talking about? Ooh, this is unexpectedly delectable!" Aurelia is the only person I've ever seen who eats "finger food" with gloves on. Now that Krieg is sane, that probably makes her the crazy one.

"Zer0, how do you know what happened?" Gaige used her cybernetic hand. At least she's got that excuse.

Agamotto's Eye

Showed me how the war will end

And left a message

Lilith chewed another bite of chimichanga for a moment, staring at Zer0, then asked, "What message?"

"Lil, don't —" Mordecai warned.

"— not a good idea —" Brick chimed in.

"Oh, I don't think we —"

"No —"

"— before we —"

"Let's don't —"

Zer0 stepped up to the situation table, and before anyone could say anything more to stop him, placed both hands on the edge, looked up at us, and...

...music started to play from the speakers on the sides of his helmet.

 _We're no strangers to love_

 _You know the rules and so do I_

 _A full commitment's what I'm thinking of_

 _You wouldn't get this from any other guy_

I don't care if Deadpool won't die. If I ever get the chance, I'll kill that son of a bitch anyway.


End file.
